The End of All Things
by Shortstack and Fishface
Summary: The scene was surreal, the reality of it not quite within his grasp. Cries of sorrow and lamentation had yet to reach his ears. He was numb to the sight of young boys sobbing over the bruised and battered bodies of lost friends.


Author's Note: We don't own Newsies. If we did, do you think we'd be writing fanfictions about them? Hell no! Ahem... This is a story of war. We don't really want these things to happen to our characters, so in a way, it's like a fan fiction of our fan fiction, but it's still of Newsies, you know? Well... maybe you don't. But anyways. This is written by two lovely best friends, that'd be me, Fishface, Queen of the Review-Cookies and Hep Duchess of Spontaneity, and Shortstack, Empress of Writing and Lady of Spot Fluff... We wrote "And Then There Was You" over the summer, and winter vacation brought this about... Have fun (ahem), and, if you review, I promise cookies!  
  
Shortstack: Hey!!!!!!!! It's not just Spot fluff anymore! *grumbles* I promise bigger cookies *nyah*. That'll teach me to let her write the Author's Note... Oh well, enjoy!  
  
* * * *  
  
Prologue  
  
The smell of blood had not yet been washed away. Although the streets were becoming cluttered with passers-by, everything still seemed to silently move around the broad young man, who had yet to speak a word.  
  
The scene was surreal, the reality of it not quite within his grasp. Cries of sorrow and lamentation had yet to reach his ears. If it was still raining, he did not know it. He was numb to the sight of young boys sobbing over the bruised and battered bodies of lost friends.  
  
All around him were the faces of boys he thought he'd known. He had never conceived that these boys could have flooded the streets with each other's blood. He would have never dreamed, even in the worst of his nightmares, of the violence that had come to pass. These were mere boys, they were not soldiers, they were not fighting men. They could not have had conviction, for there was no cause for conviction.  
  
He found himself staring into cold, hollow eyes, the same eyes that had not so long before been filled with life, freedom, and burning confidence. Gazing at the boy, he wondered to himself, had he really hoped to win, with less than a handful of men? Was his faith in himself that strong? Or maybe, a new idea came upon him, the boy had no intention of fighting at all. Perhaps that confidence had waned so much as to move him to a thoughtless plunge into defeat. Maybe he had foreseen the ending of their game of vengeance, and realized there would be no victory with what little strength they had left. He had given up hope, or possibly recognized that it had never existed. There had only been rash and careless action, born from the fires of painful deception, burning passion, and aching jealousy.  
  
* * * *  
  
Chapter One  
  
The dawn had just broken, and the light from outside the window was hardly enough to see by. Everything, even down in the streets, was still. Slowly, Anabeth opened her eyes, blinking the sleep away. She could barely see Spot pull a shirt over his shoulders and walk through the doorway. She called to him.  
  
"Spot?"  
  
Slowly, as if he was about to lose his patience, he stepped back into the room, "Huh?"  
  
Anabeth moved some of her tangled hair behind her ears, "Good morning."  
  
He raised an oh-so-cocky eyebrow at her, then gave her a sort of half- smile, "Good morning." He turned to leave again.  
  
She sat up in bed and said purposely loudly, "When are you planning on coming back?"  
  
Spot stepped back into the room, letting out a frustrated sigh, "When I get back. I have to go work, Anabeth."  
  
"I know-" The door closed behind him, and she finished lamely, "-that."  
  
The dingy two-room apartment was silent, excepting the soft cooing of Little Kerry in his sleep. Anabeth tried for a moment to force herself back to sleep, but all attempts were in vain. There was no going back to a calming rest as she had hoped, so she dragged herself out of bed.  
  
Quietly, so as not to disturb Kerry's dreams, she crept to the bedroom door, stepping slowly to minimize the creaking of the floorboards. The kitchen was quiet, Spot had walked through it quickly like a breath of wind. As she did every other morning, she went to the front door of the apartment and opened it slowly. Looking down at the floor of the hallway, she recognized the two familiar bottles and picked them up and brought them inside the tiny kitchen. When she laid them on the small counter next to the sink, Anabeth let out a short exasperated sigh. A bit was gone from one of them. Spot had helped himself to a drink on his way out again.  
  
After setting some of the milk to be heated, she reached into the cabinet over the counter and grabbed a small bottle for Kerry. She put it in the sink to wash it, and in a quick moment, her eyes shifted up to the window and she looked out into the street. With a short gasp, she forgot about getting the bottle ready for Little Kerry.  
  
Across the street from the apartment building, she saw Spot Conlon standing on the sidewalk, only slightly visible from the fourth floor. And to her dismay, he was not alone. He was talking to a young girl, and Anabeth could remember seeing her before because she worked for Spot. For a second, she wondered what they might be saying, and then thought that perhaps she would not have wanted to know. They stood there talking for a bit longer, and Anabeth could not tear her eyes away. As they spoke, Spot's figure seemed to grow stiff and cold. But from the window, his facial reactions were not clear.  
  
When they had been there for almost five minutes, the girl grabbed Spot by the wrist and led him away, but not to the distribution center as would have been normal.  
  
Anabeth continued to watch out the window, even after the shadows had disappeared from sight. In her mind, she imagined the worst from Spot and the young girl he had vanished with into the early morning hours. Despite her efforts to suppress the thought and finish preparing the bottle for her son, she let a small tear drift down her cheek and into the sink silently.  
  
But Anabeth should not have worried herself over Spot's loyalty; it was not infidelity to which the young girl was leading him.  
  
Rather, they went straight to his old clubhouse on the docks, a place which had not been used in several months and was in horrible disrepair. Under other circumstances, Spot would have thought it an unusual place for them to go. He no longer considered it a palace from which he ruled all of Brooklyn. Now it was just an old deserted building.  
  
However, when they walked through the doorway, he was hardly concerned with its disuse. He was already furious, with murder in his glowing green eyes. Knowing what he intended to do with the boys cowering before him, he fancied himself incredibly lucky not to be one of them.  
  
As for the three boys, they were victims of their own tempers and terrible judgement, and now they came to realize it.  
  
"I oughta wring every one 'a your necks for this!" Spot fumed, missing the days when he could have smacked the boys upside their heads with that old cane of his. Approaching them, he shouted, "I dare ya to give me one good reason not to!"  
  
"We're sorry, Spot," the oldest boy began. "It was just an accident, is all."  
  
After a pause, an icy smile came across Spot's lips, and he let out a soft chuckle. "An accident?"  
  
Without missing a beat, he drew back his fist and punched the boy across the cheek, sending him sprawling onto the floor, the sharp pain stinging his face. "You call murder an accident?!" Spot bellowed. He looked down at the boy gasping at his feet, and kicked him swiftly in the ribs. In agony, he rolled over on the floor, clutching his stomach.  
  
"How 'bout if I kill ya right now, huh?" Spot yelled, kicking the boy again even harder, ignoring his screams. "Think they'll call it an accident?"  
  
"Stop it!" The girl, Swipe, who had been standing quietly against the wall, ran to Spot and put her hand on his arm. He looked at her angrily, panting in his frustration.  
  
"Spot, it really wasn't supposed to happen," one of the other two boys spoke up fearfully. "Nobody was gonna get hurt, but we got carried away. And we didn't mean for him to die... we didn't mean to do it."  
  
Spot said nothing, only continued to glare at them while trying to catch his breath. He turned away, and went to the door, searching his pocket for the cigarette he needed so badly. While he lit it with the last of his matches, the younger boys helped their friend try to stand up. The pain in his stomach was burning, and he groaned as he moved to his feet.  
  
"Go to work," Spot's voice bit the silence. "Don't say anything to anybody, not even anyone who already knows. I'll deal with it myself."  
  
"They'll send Lancelot up here from Manhattan later." Swipe took the injured boy's arm to help him walk.  
  
"I know." Spot took a long drag on his cigarette, "Let him come. I'll handle it."  
  
In the late afternoon, the sky was dark with hovering clouds. The clubhouse was illuminated by a few soft-glowing lamps, but even they seemed to go dark from the chill of hatred that blew in when Lancelot's entrance was followed by a few Manhattan boys. Some of them Spot recognized from the strike, Specs was the eldest, he was the tall one with dark hair and glasses, and then Dutchy, who was just as tall, with blonde hair. Kid Blink, Spot had known him since he was just a young boy. The last boy who came in, almost slamming the door, was even taller than Dutchy and Specs; he had been Skittery's best friend, Snitch.  
  
Spot felt his body tense up, aching for a cigarette, he turned to Buttons, a sandy-haired newsboy who, though a rough drinker and a tough fighter in earlier years, had softened a bit. Spot felt that he, of all people, after accidentally killing another Brooklyn boy a couple of years before, would understand, and be helpful in smoothing things over with Manhattan. The last thing Spot needed on his hands was a bunch of angry newsboys from Manhattan. It was, after all, the Manhattan boys who had started the strike and gotten the paper prices back where they should be. Nobody had a conflict with Manhattan, even with the Cowboy gone, and Brooklyn could not have all of the New York newsies against them at once. They were the toughest newsies in the city, but they would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of the rest of the city. Buttons handed him a cigarette, and Spot lit it, took a long drag, and motioned for his "guests" to take a seat.  
  
Swipe had made her way down the stairs of the clubhouse. Spot had forgotten she had been staying where Shortstack and Fishface used to reside, but it bothered him little. He did not care that she was there, in fact, he found it rather comforting that there were now three in the room from Brooklyn. Tiredly, almost mechanically, she took the seat between Spot and Snitch.  
  
Lancelot was a slight young man, with light brown hair, and piercing blue eyes. He had this air of confidence about him that almost rivaled that of Spot Conlon's... almost. Most of the time, he was soft-spoken, but on the occasion, in the heat of an argument, his voice would rise above the rafters, and even Kloppman would jump in surprise. It had troubled Spot as to why Jack had left Lancelot in charge of Manhattan, as far as Spot knew, Lancelot was new to the area, in fact, new to being a newsie at all. Of course, these assumptions had been made before Spot had met him.  
  
Now, Spot stared him straight in the eye, and something scared him. This "Lancelot" was not at all like the Cowboy. The Cowboy had always had ulterior motives. Behind everything Jack Kelly ever did, was a scheme to leave Manhattan, and go out west to Santa Fe. Now, he was there, and he had left Manhattan to another young man, and this young man did not have any intentions of leaving New York City.  
  
"I wanted you to know," Lancelot's voice raised a bit, as if to make it apparent to everyone in the room, "that we're NOT going to retaliate on Brooklyn. This wasn't a murder, this was an accident. We only want to find out what happened and what we can do about it."  
  
Something inside Spot wanted to laugh, but he didn't. He simply blew out a bit of smoke and leaned over on his knees, "That's good, 'cause we don't want any trouble goin' on."  
  
He couldn't quite think of what else to say. He had not had any clue as to what had happened until that morning, when Swipe had shown up at his door, told him to dress quickly and meet her in the street. All he knew was that Skittery was dead, and there was no turning back from that.  
  
Specs was the next to open his mouth, "So how d'ya s'pose we'll be figuring out what happened?" He questioned, "I mean, none of us were there-"  
  
"I was." Everyone's eyes moved towards Swipe, who, in a way, had offered a testimony, "He was doin' some business with Alley Cat, y'know the one with the fiddle? An' after Alley left, Skits started drinkin' a bit, but not enough to get drunk. I'll tell you now, Skittery was not drunk. He played some poker though, and I'll tell you, he ain't so good at poker."  
  
Spot caught Snitch smiling at this part. Perhaps he'd known this for years, and perhaps he'd teased his friend for it before.  
  
"Yeah, well, they got to horsin' around and then they got to fightin', and yeah, they didn't just leave 'im afterwards though, they knew they did wrong, they took him back to Manhattan..." She stopped there.  
  
"It was all an accident." Lancelot said, turning to Kid Blink, whose eye seemed complacently angry as it stared at Spot.  
  
There was a longer conversation about what was to be done with his body, and how amends would be made between Brooklyn and Manhattan, but most of it passed like a blur for Spot. There was to be no retaliation or any more "business transactions", which Snitch had later in the conversation revealed to be a bet that Skittery had lost to Alley Cat a few weeks before, and things were to go as smoothly as possible. Lancelot would pass on the word to the rest of his boys, and Spot to his. If anything were to happen, well, they could only hope that nothing else would.  
  
As Lancelot stood up to leave, he smiled graciously, "I hope our next meeting will be a happier one," He said, shaking Spot's hand. Spot didn't even mention that he had not spit in it, so it wasn't proper, but it didn't seem to matter.  
  
"I'm sure it will be," He had replied, but as he made the long walk back to his and Anabeth's apartment, Spot had this unexplainable ominous feeling that it wasn't going to be. 


End file.
